Have I Done Something Wrong?

Financially, anyhow. Take a look at the pie chart. Virtually no donations so far this month.

I’ve been dealing with a mile-long freight train of pain lately and maybe it’s showing through. I dunno. I’ve tried to pour the coals to ‘er, focusing on work, trying to make this site the best Libertarian car site around (it seems to be the only Libertarian car site around). But all of a sudden, over the past several weeks, everything seems to be coming unglued.

$38 so far for the month.

What’s happened?

Should I give up?

Hero Cops seems to have run its course. I’m also tired of dealing with Clover and think henceforth I’ll just delete whatever he sends in.

Are any of you experiencing technical issues with the site?

Clearly, something has gone south.

I’d like to fix it … if it’s fixable.

Update (Saturday): The pie chart is less red as of today. Thanks to those who’ve chipped in. I’m heartened by this display of support. Maybe the APU will light this puppy up again.

To those who’ve not yet chipped in but like the site, please consider that what goes on here is only possible because of the support of people like you who’ve already chipped in. Off the MSM reservation, it is damned hard to keep the wheels turning. Clovers abound. If you enjoy me stomping them into a lumpy cold gruel, all you have to do to is keep ‘ol Eric fed.

PS: EPautos stickers are free to those who sign up for a $5 or more monthly recurring donation to support EPautos, or for a one-time donation of $10 or more. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)

25 COMMENTS

Tom Woods and Lew Rockwell have some sort of affiliate arrangement with Amazon where if someone visits Amazon through their website and makes a purchase, Tom and Lew get a percentage at Amazon’s expense. Are you aware of this? Perhaps you could add this to your site.

I haven’t tried Amazon, but I think it operates like Adsense, which means you get a few pennies, dimes and nickels here and there.

Their business model is the “click” model – meaning you (the publisher) only get paid (very little) if someone actually clicks on the ad. The exposure, the real estate on your pages… they get it for freeeeeeeeeeeee.

It’s like Ford taking out an ad in a paper but only paying the paper if someone walks into a Ford dealer and buys a car.

Hunter S Thompson, the greatest writer of our generation, was marginalized because he had “done something wrong.”

Look where it got him, for all his inkstained toils and troubles.

But I am grateful and proud of him, for always being himself, or at least as much of himself as he was able to pull off, in this “Waterhead Fuckaround” nightmare (his term), we’ve somehow allowed ourselves to end up living in.
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A couple of points…first you may be overpaying for your hosting. Have a look at dreamhost.com…I’ve been a customer for probably ten years. Second, I’ll try to send a little extra this month. I’m currently helping my brother build a chicken coop near Richmond. How far are you from I81? More later….keep up the good work.

We had cheaper servers/hosting before. And the site crashed regularly. The current server (dedicated) can handle the traffic without crashing and the site loads quickly. I’m trying to run a professional operation here!

Plus, I am out of my depth as far as dealing with crashes, etc. If the site goes down, it goes down – and I can’t do a damned thing about it. (Dom’s gone; could not afford to pay him.)

It exists as a concrete in the realm of electrons we are each able to perceive with our eyes.

Yet if you had the US Army point guns at all 7.3 billion humans on the planet, and demand they look at the pie chart, and confirm how complete is right now.

A great many of them, would not grasp it's reality, many others would philosophically or morally dismiss it as being part of some evil culture, and not even existing as far as they're concerned.

Unlike the abstractions Santa Claus, Queen of England, or Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, which are percepts electrochemically imagined in our brains. The pie chart is empirically and measurably more real, than the more mainstream aforementioned authority figures.

Perhaps some day, there will be a process or technology that makes the contents of your mind quantifiable and able to be projected to a screen and made concrete, but there is not one today.

The pie graph, which is at 5%, is an objective concrete referent, to the abstraction that exists in only Eric's mind, which many of us can naturally grok biologically, but not manifest as explicitly connected to his educated and experientially determined, monthly need to run this website.

To what degree is the internet an Agora. And to what degree is it being harnessed and hammered on the metaphorical anvils as a worldwide Company Town, that abstraction is one to keep your eye on. Since it fluctuates day to day and hour to hour.

Assuming you're familiar with the abstractions of days and hours, that is, as most of us in the emergent one world Company town, have come to tow the line on realness of days and hours as essential percepts.

How about 25% pay 1 buck a month? That seems more doable.
You need a business plan. How do some of the other non-MSM, liberty-oriented sites make it? Talk with them and find out.
Seriously, 60 bucks a year is a lot for most people. 12-15, no problem.

If 25 percent of this site’s readership donated $1 a month, there would be no problem. I could afford to hire a tech guy to maintain the site; maybe even a copy editor/designer to proof the articles and keep things looking nice and professional.

But it’s like “free” music online. The fact it is available for “free” means very few people will pay for it. Even a negligible sum like $1 (which anyone can afford).

I don’t know how to resolve this. I figured that this site’s audience – which is Libertarian leaning – would be more likely to voluntarily support the site. And many do. The problem is that many (most) do not.

Any site (not just this one) that has even 10,000 regular readers ought to be easily/comfortably self-supporting. This site has 80,000-100,000 readers and I often have trouble just making ends meet. Paying for the server/hosting/back-up and having enough net left over to justify full-time work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the work. I’m not doing this for the money. But I can’t do it if it doesn’t earn me enough money to pay the bills.

If I were younger, I’d consider being a Gigolo or some other cush occupation.

You haven’t done anything wrong. We just happen to all be in the same boat, one that is sinking……

I promise to send some money, as soon as I have some money. All I can do in the meantime is to encourage you to go on. If you got to take on some freelance stuff in the mainstream world, and publish here a bit less, you gotta do what you gotta do.

It sucks the money part hasn’t been figured out, as it seems like it is otherwise an awesome gig.

Clover has run his course, most of his comments have no content anymore and are inane. If it saves you time and aggravation, send his comments to the circular file. And with the police videos, there are other websites that have those, and few people here comment on them.

I have no problems viewing the site. (Although it does not help your current predicament — Currently I can not provide financial assistance. Perhaps things will change by the end of the year — I am hopeful that things will trend into the black soon.)

My ex tech guy (he’s gone because I could no longer afford to pay him) told me we were averaging 80,000-100,000 unique visits per month.

The server/back-up costs a couple hundred a month. We have a high quality dedicated server (which is why the site does not crash and why it loads quickly) but I am getting to the point of not being able to afford that, either.

My goal is to avoid losing money.

To just make enough to be able to do this without going broke. I’m not mercenary. I’m just trying to keep my head above water. Which ought to be not this difficult. If just 10 percent of the people who come here regularly tossed in $5 a month, we’d be fine. The trick is getting even 5 percent to toss in $5 a month. Everyone wants free. In a downward-spinning cycle of impoverishment and misery.

I sent an email as well. mrk030 – maybe there is a way we (or whoever) can combine resources and figure something out. Eric – you have my permission to give my email address to mrk030 if it makes sense in any way. I am in the business of servers and such.

eric, I have a theory(I know you’re thinking ‘god save me’ but bear with me). It seems as though almost every person who comes to this site, and certainly everyone who stays anytime, are staunch libertarians/anarchysts. My theory says that type of person is loathe to kiss ass with clover being the only one with a nose so permanently dark as to be a tattoo.

If you will, we are, for the most part, outsiders in the realm of most things, preferring to make our own way on a take it or leave it basis. That attitude tends not to pay as well as those who will tolerate anything for a dollar.

Not saying we’re an anti-social bunch, we simply can’t tolerate brown-nosing to the degree most will go. We suffer for it in the pocketbook.

I think that’s why some of us would’ve in not too distant past been thieves, of a sort.
Highwaymen, perhaps, or hit stagecoaches for payrolls, maybe like the Cole-Younger gang. Take apart the railroads.
Or Bonny and Clyde, burning the bank’s records – robbery being secondary to the important part of ending the farm foreclosures. 😉

It also used to be easier to make a living – every which way. These days you can’t even get into the UFC or boxing, let alone be an inventor with patrons, or a “meager author,” if Eric will forgive the term. 😉

We’re living Rollerball. (The first one, BTW, not the remake. “The team is everything.” The collective is all that matters to most people they’re so determined to “fit in” they’ll sacrifice their own soul to be part of a herd – IT geeks, Managers, Preppies, Punks, even… Sellouts of the worst sort, going along to get along, JUST to be part of “a group.” )

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Eric started out writing about cars for mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Times, Detroit News and Free Press, Investors Business Daily, The American Spectator, National Review, The Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.